man it's so good to have hockey back on TV! I was wondering if anyone else has seen any NHL preseason games and what they thought of the game since there is such a focus on "The New NHL". How did the penalty calls affect the game? What did you notice about the new rules?
I'll tell you what I thought:
First the new rink layout; it is very noticeable that the net has been moved back toward the end boards by two feet and that the blue line has been moved toward center ice by two feet as well. The offensive zones look huge. An interesting comment by Troy Murray (former Hawk and now color man) on a powerplay was that if you are playing 'the point' out by the new blueline you are no longer a real threat. Being four feet further back from the net a shot is much less dangerous. That will be interesting if defenseman habitually man the blue line as they've been taught on powerplays or if they will move down in the zone more to make their shots more dangerous.
With the omission of the red line when determining a two-line pass I did see a few long breakout passes that would have been 2-line passes last year. I guess that's a good change in spirit seeing the pace quickened. With all these things though I don't know how much it will actually do what it's intended to do once players/coaches find their way around/take advantage of them. No matter what though those big offensive zones will be a factor all year.
In the game I saw between the Wild and the Hawks there was an ugly stretch in the middle of the 2nd period where there were calls right and left with five players in the box at one point. Other than that though it didn't really disrupt the game and I felt like it wasn't much different from what an average 2003-2004 game was like. I guess I have mixed feelings on that...
I did like that there were things called that wouldn't have been called before. There were several interference calls directly off of faceoffs where it's become the norm for people not taking the faceoff to grab and impede the opposing player after the puck is dropped. There was a call for a defenseman putting his stick between a forward's legs as he skated away from the boards and a call for putting the stick around an opposing player's waist from behind to slow him down.
I didn't see a game called as strictly as they've been saying it would be. I guess there have been games with 30 or more penalties called. That's troublesome to me though because while I don't want to see 30 penalties called it does seem maybe they are backing off/down from that already and it's only a week into the preseason. We'll see.
